Christopher Rivera » Web-Development

Space Elevators according to xkcd.com

chrisrivera — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:59:38 +0000

This is so funny and yet so true.

Google Chrome – Test Drive

chrisrivera — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:31:38 +0000

I decided to give a try of the new Google browser called Chrome. So far I really like it. I’ve been using it for about 4 hours so far, and here is what I like about it.

The internal design of the browser, where it creates a sepeate thread for each webpage is great. I’ve run into situations with firefox where it crashes on me occassionally. It’s annoying to have a crash, especially when working on something. Chrome manages to seperate that crash so that the tab where the page is at crashes, not the entire browser.
The user interface is simple. The url bar also acts as a search bar. It should have been like that from the beginning. It’s great. I don’t have to go between two different areas to go to either a webpage or do a search.
The ability to create an application link. Say you go to a website often. Make it an application accessible from your desktop or quickbar. One click and you’re there. Awesome.
I can drag a tabbed window from the browser and make it it’s own window without having the page reload. FRAKKING AWESOME. This is by far the best feature for me. As a developer, there are times I have multiple tabs in one window, but then I want to seperate the tab into it’s own window for side by side comparison. Now I can with ease. I can also drag a window back into the tabs, without the page reloading.
It imported everything from my firefox browser. I was able to surf immediately.

Overall, I’m very happy with this browser. Granted, I don’t have some of the plugins I use for firefox, available for Chrome yet, but I think in time, they will appear.

WordPress Tip: Using the More Link

chrisrivera — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:24:13 +0000

I was noticing in the wordpress admin, that you can add a more link. This more link is very useful. Have you ever been to a website an noticed that each blog posting just runs on and on? Well some of the postings on my own site have been very long, and I don’t really like that. I want them to be more of an intro text on the homepage, with a link to read more. Here’s an example.

So I noticed the more link and was wondering what it did. I created a test post, clicked the link, and it visual adds this line bar with a more link. I published the blog, went to the homepage and noticed, anything above the more link is shown, anything below it is not. Cool. Definitely a good feature to have. It allows your user to scan the entries when they view them on the homepage and when they view by category, then they can read the entire posting when they click more.

I’m happy.

WordPress releases version 2.6

chrisrivera — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:07:00 +0000

WordPress released their latest version of their blogging software on July 15th. I hope to have some time to try out the new version andd examine the way it uses resources. I’m hoping to see some improvement from it.

In the process of my initial research, I came across one possible solution to the handling resources better. It’s called WordPress Light, that replaces the front end portion of the software, but limits your capabilities a bit.

Ultimately, I would like to have a blogging software that would run very efficiently on a VPS. WordPress is working fine for now, but I’m concerned as traffick builds up.

Why Flash is bad at times.

chrisrivera — Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:10:25 +0000

I’m on the canon website, checking out a single point of information. A friend of mine purchased the Canon EOS 10D (lucky bastard), and I wanted to know the time between the click of the photo button to take the picture, and the time of the photo capture. My experience with a non-SLR camera has been about 1-3 secs. That’s all I wanted to know. Well after going through the country selection, and some simple product selects, I see the product, and click on it… I’m taking to a flash site.

Ok I proceed. Now I’m downloading 100-250K flash files for each page of the experience. All I want is a bit of info that takes up less than 10 bytes. I click on the sitemap page, which is another flash movie, where I find the link for the specifications. I click and am taken to an HTML page.

People, please for goodness sakes, stop the flash madness. YOU’RE KILLING TREES, *same idea as the Anti-SUV campaign*. Too many developers create nonsense flash. Flash splash pages, that i have to wait to load to get to the real content. thanks to those who have added ‘Skip Intro’ on their flash splash pages. by the way, how many times must someone see it to say ‘ok enough already’ when I visit your site more than once. Your work is not something fantastic, so stop.